Waiting is Genetic
by The Dancing Daleks
Summary: My name is Lysa Wilson, and I've been waiting for The Doctor for three years. Technically she's been waiting for him her whole life, after her grandmother Amy Pond raised her on tales of his adventures after Lysa's parents' tragic deaths. But this Doctor is not the one Lysa remembers from the stories. He doesn't even seem to want her around. But maybe she can change that.
1. Chapter 1

My name is Lysa Wilson, and I've been waiting for The Doctor for three years. He said he'd be back in a week, two tops. It was after three that I realized he'd left me for good.

Really I guess you could say I've been waiting for The Doctor my whole life. My parents died when I was young so my grandparents raised me. They told me stories before bedtime of princesses and super heroes, but mostly they told me stories of The Doctor. I always thought my grandmother made them up. She never ran short of stories to tell, some crazier than others. They were the best bedtime stories, that dashing man in the bow tie, with his sonic screwdriver and TARDIS. My grandmother drew me pictures sometimes. He was always wearing the same tweed jacket, had the same combed over hair and the same bow tie. I used to ask her why he never changed his clothes, and she'd laughed and said she'd have to ask him. She always told her stories like they were real, like she'd been there, but I knew that was ridiculous. Sometimes she drew me with him in the pictures, with my red hair streaming and a snarky look on my face. I never knew why she always drew me in miniskirts, having never worn one in my life. She just smiled at me when I asked.

My grandmother had always told me that there were millions of things I would never know, and that I should never close a door on one of them. Then she'd get kind of sad and would go sit in her rocking chair, staring at the bulletin board of pictures she'd drawn for me. It was then that my grandfather would come and tell me it was time for bed.

Looking back on it now, I wish I'd listened to her stories more seriously. Maybe then I would have thought to ask the big question, the question that was plaguing me now: Why had he left her? But like so many things, it was too late.

I knew now that The Doctor was very much real, and that my grandmother had really traveled with him. Only one moment had erased my 21 years of doubt. But those days of blind faith were over. The Doctor was gone, and I had a regular life here in Snoqualmie, Washington.

The Doctor never really explained why we had landed here all those years ago, only that it was important to the space time continuum. He was always going on about that so I hadn't listened. It was on the list of regrets. We'd stopped in the tiny logging town in the year 2009, years before I had even been born. I was so out of place with my English accent, acquired from a childhood spent in the countryside of London. The Doctor had too, and quite honestly his attempts at faking the American's accent were painful, to say the least.

Currently, I was living in a small apartment with Marnie, my girlfriend, and her brother Daniel. We'd met a few weeks after I realized the Doctor wasn't coming back and moved in together soon after that. It was probably for the best, seeing as I wasn't a citizen of this country or registered in any way. In this time, it was as if I didn't exist. As years went by, I slowly started to forget The Doctor. I never told Marnie or Daniel about him and they never pestered me about how an English girl had ended up on the opposite side of the pond. It was almost too good to be true.

There were a few downsides to my new life. For one, I couldn't be employed because of my lack of, well, existence, and I didn't have the skills or money to forge myself an identity. Marnie had to support the three of us and it was… rough. I nannied small children in the neighborhoods by us to help, but it never seemed to help. I also had to be careful what I said. Growing up in the 2060's was completely different than the 2010's and then I had to add all of the traveling I had done with The Doctor to the list of things that could confuse me. Occasionally, I'd slip and mention some alien device that boils water almost instantly and makes the best coffee in the universe. Marnie would just laugh, and tell me I should write a book with all of my amazing creations from my mind.

Sometimes I thought about writing children's books of my travels with The Doctor. Not the scary ones of course, but little kids would love to hear tales of three headed lemurs or time travel in and of itself. I'd even started a few drafts, but I'd always set them aside. My grandmother had always told me that The Doctor was a secret. When humans didn't know about aliens, they didn't know about him. It always had to be that way, through all of history. It would always happen like that. It must always happen like that. And sure, occasionally they would meet, but life would always return to normal for humans. The Doctor always used to say they were the versatile of creatures, but they could be downright stupid when they wanted to be. That didn't stop him from saving them though. Us. I always forget I am human. Time travel will do that I guess. When you've seen things that few others of your species have, it almost feels like you're not the same. How could you be? The Doctor changes people. That's what grandma always said. For better or worse he changes them.

The day I met The Doctor was probably the worst day of my life. It was the anniversary of my parents' deaths, I'd lost my job and my cat had died just a few days prior. Every year I brought them flowers. I was their only child and they were both only children, so I was the only one who really visited their graves. Normally, I'd sit between their headstones for a while, tell them how my life had been in the last year. I'd never been particularly religious, but I'd always liked to hope that somehow they could hear me. I'd lay the flowers against the headstones, sunflowers for mom and carnations for dad, and then I'd leave. This year, however, I had barely gotten to their plots when a man in a caretakers uniform yelled "Duck!"

No sooner had I that a headstone came flying over me where my head had been moments ago. I shrieked a little and hid behind a gaudy monstrosity some richy rich had had erected for his headstone. I could hear more crashing and then the crashing stopped. I peeked my head out over the top of the headstone and saw the caretaker, lying on the ground, unconscious. Standing over him was, well, nothing. But floating in the air above him was another headstone. I don't know how I got past the floating headstone bit. Maybe it was my grandmother's stories. Maybe it was adrenaline. All I know is I picked up a chunk of broken headstone that had been thrown at me, stood and yelled, "Hey you!" The headstone didn't move, which was good. Hoping I wasn't going crazy, I hurled the rock with all my strength at what, I thought, should be the chest of whatever invisible creature was holding the headstone. I heard a clunk, like the rock had actually connected with something, and them a man shimmered into view. Well at least I think it was a man. He was wearing a suit of armor, kind of like Iron Man, but fatter and bigger. The man/machine tossed away the headstone and looked straight at me. I picked up another rock, spunky to the last, and said "Go ahead. I dare you."

It was a stand off, like in old westerns, except he held all the cards and I held a rock. The caretaker started to stir and sat up. He looked at me, confused, and I shouted, "Run! That thing's trying to-"

"Kill me? Yes, yes I know. But now that I see, I can do this." The man whipped a metal wand out of his pocket, extended it towards the machine man and pressed a button. It glowed green and emitted a buzzing sound. The machine man clunked and rattled like it was shutting down, then suddenly vanished.

"No, no no!" shouted the caretaker. He ran to the spot where the machine had stood and waved his wand over it a few times, then looked intently at it. "Emergency temporal shift. Taking lessons from a Dalek, have you now. " He continued muttering to himself. Nervously, I cleared my throat. He spun around, and looked closely at me, blinking a few times before he said uncertainly, "Pond?" I shook my head. He blinked again and muttered, "Stupid, stupid doctor. She must be in her 80's by now. Probably a crazy cat lady, and Rory's finally losing his mind. Thousands of years guarding a box will do that." He kept going, but in all of his ranting, I'd only heard one word. The caretaker turned to leave. I knew it was my only chance. If I had seen a machine man and wasn't crazy then, then I could say this one word.

"Doctor?" I called out hesitantly. The caretaker stopped, and turned. My eyes grew wide. Was it a fluke? I had to be sure. "Doctor… is that you?" I called.

The man marched towards me quickly. He marched right into me almost. There was barely a foot between us. He stared at me intently, as if he were examining a bug under a microscope. He pulled out the glowing wand again and this time, pointed it at me. This time I got a closer look at it, and immediately knew what it was.

"Sonic!" I cried, pointing at it. The man clutched the screwdriver to his chest defensively. He towered over me, although with me being only five feet tall it really wasn't that difficult. He went back to examining me, and then uttered only a single word.

"How?"

I couldn't talk fast enough. "Oh my God it is you, I mean not that it wouldn't be you but I didn't know you were real. Oh my God she was right wait till I tell her she'll flip oh my God The Doctor! You're real!" I started to hyperventilate. I just stared at him. But there was something wrong. He was wrong. "But you can't be. You don't look anything like the pictures. The… the bow tie and the hair. How?"

The Doctor stared at me for a few seconds before asking, "Who is your mother? Is your name Williams?" He sounded fierce, but I shook my head.

"No, it's Wilson." He looked a bit crest fallen. "But my grandfather's is." His eyes perked up.

"But your grandmother's isn't?" He said.

"Yea. How'd you know?"

He chuckled, "Because if I know Amy Pond, she will always be Amy Pond. Rory Williams is gonna be waiting a lot longer than a thousand years if he wants her to change her name." My head was spinning.

"She travelled with you didn't she? She told me all the stories. Like the angels and the Daleks. She told me about your wife and-" The Doctor held up his hand.

"Yes she travelled with me. But those days are over. I work alone now. In fact I don't even work. I just… exist. So it was lovely you meet you Ms. Wilson, but I must be off." He turned around once again and started walking towards the gate of the cemetery.

This was not happening. I had found him, he was real, and now he was walking away from me. Grandma would never forgive me if I let him. "That's not the Doctor I know. It's not the Doctor my grandma knows." He stopped and turned. Even though he was closer to the gate than to me, I could see the hurt in his eyes.

"The Doctor your grandmother knows doesn't exist anymore. He's dead. And you don't know me. And you don't want to. So go run back to your stories, because that's all they are. Stories."

"But you're real. They can't just be stories if you're real." This couldn't be the right man. He was too hard. He was more of an Eeyore than a Tigger. Grandma couldn't have been wrong. Could there be more than one Doctor?

"It's better for you if they're just stories. Now I'm going to walk out of this cemetery, and you're going to go back to your normal life, like nothing ever happened, you understand? I'm just a story." He turned and started walking again. I called after him.

"My grandma said that you invited people to travel with you!" There was no response. "She said she met you when she was a little girl and you came back for her. She said she wasn't the only one. She said you had tons of folks travel with you." Still nothing. "I saved your life!" He kept walking, but he did say,

"Thanks, but I rather wish you hadn't. It's time the last Timelord just curled up and died."

The Doctor was real. I couldn't believe it. The Doctor was real… and walking away from me. Looking back on that moment, I don't know what I was thinking. That day had been the worst of my life. My parents were dead. I had no job, no relationships to hold me back, not even my cat. Grandma would understand. I whipped out my phone and texted her just four quick words, then took off running after the man in the caretaker's jumpsuit.


	2. Chapter 2

**Just realized that this would be an issue but this is obviously set in a universe where Amy and Rory can have kids. Because come on, gotta pass on that hair and the Pond obstinance! I planned this whole story out long before Asylum of the Daleks aired, so as far as I'm concerned, anything that happens in Series 7 to the Ponds hasn't… Which could get sketchy. Anyway, enjoy! Toodles!**

Amy Pond was in the garden when that fateful text arrived. Rory had ripped up her weak attempts at growing, well, anything with his latest rush out the door to yell at what he thought was the Doctor. This time it was a leaf blower. Honestly, use a rake. Rory had never really gotten over being left behind in 1987. Something to do with living through it three times and what not. Amy had had more of a problem not accidently revealing the future. Really, the whole thing was an exercise in restraint. The only thing that really kept Amy and Rory from cashing in on their knowledge was the fact that they'd spent most of that year travelling the universe with the Doctor and had missed most major events. They had seen most of the Olympic games several times, though, and managed to win big in the underground bookie world.

They'd used the money to live comfortably and wait. At least that was what Amy did with it. Rory, on the other hand, had decided he was going to embark in an adventure neither of them had ever really managed. He got a job. A steady job. He had managed to get a job as a nurse in a nearby hospital (having the Doctor's psychic paper had helped in re-inventing themselves, as all of their proper identification hadn't been issued for another 20 years). He went back to school to become a doctor, although some procedures he definitely remembered hadn't quite been discovered yet. It took much convincing from Amy to keep him from inventing them a bit earlier than scheduled. Something about the space time continuum. Amy wasn't really sure. It just sounded like what the Doctor would have said.

Amy always found herself thinking of what the Doctor would do. When she and Rory named their newborn baby in 1991, she wondered what name the Doctor would have suggested. Probably something ridiculous. They'd gone with Therese in the end. Therese Delia Williams. The name had been mutually decided upon. No need for their past (or was it future?) selves to try and find their ancestors and stumble upon their daughter. No, that was definitely a paradox they didn't need. Williams was common enough, not like Pond. They'd even make sure they knew no one by the name of Therese or Delia. Didn't need another naming their daughter after their daughter incident.

Honestly the fact that Rory and Amy had even had to have that conversation was an indication of screwed up their lives had actually been. Normal people didn't worry about naming their children after people they knew. Normal people didn't worry that their past selves would find them, for Christ sake. Amy would never tell Rory, but sometimes, as she watched her baby sleep, warm and safe in her crib, she was so happy the Doctor had flown away. That didn't mean she didn't think about him.

No, she thought about him all the time. Silly things reminded her of him. The fez wearing characters in _Indiana Jones_ (which she and Rory saw in theaters), or a recording of some classical piece he had once told them he played the triangle in. At first, the memories made her sad, but soon she had no room in her life to be sad. She had her husband, her baby and a life. Soon, the Doctor just became a bed time story that had once been true. She'd stopped brushing her fingers over the psychic paper folded and hidden in a desk drawer. She called colors navy blue or royal blue. It wasn't that she forgot, she simply didn't try to remember.

There was still that spark in her from her travels. For instance, she could still understand and read other languages, even though she couldn't speak a word of Russian (or at least that's what she thought the butcher in the corner shop was yelling at his wife in). She could always give interesting side stories to Therese's history text book, which her daughter never truly took in as fact, but enjoyed none the less. Eventually though, it became just stories they would tell each other. The spark remained, however. It was hidden, but all it needed was to wake up.

She was digging out the umpteenth dead buried rat that their dog had decided to leave for them hidden among the grass when her phone vibrated in her back pocket. Removing her gloves and wiping her brow, she pulled the phone from her pocket and carelessly checked the text. She and Rory had practically lost their minds waiting for cell phones to be invented again, and had been among the first to purchase iPhones in 2007. Amy wouldn't admit it, but she was fairly certain Rory had been the one to introduce the software to unlock the iPhone's capabilities, simply from memory of doing it years ago. Now, in 2042, the technology had progressed much farther, but Amy still preferred the relative security of her iPhone 4. Even well into her 70s, Amy was stubborn. She turned her attention to the message. It was from Lysa. Good on her to call. They hadn't talked in a few days.

I found the Doctor.

"Rory!" Amy yelled, the phone hitting the dirt screen down. Amy lost her balance and fell into the dirt, sucking in her breath as though someone had kicked her in the gut. And when she thought about it, someone had. He had.

Rory came sprinting out of the house. Well, more like he limped quickly out of the house, trying to use his cane as little as possible. The book he had been reading was lying forgotten on the floor. Rory always feared that one day he'd hear that scream, the utter panic and desperation in his wife's voice, the shock, and he'd find a blue box standing on their porch, and a bow tie wearing mad man asking them to come along. But what he found instead was worse. He helped his wife to a sitting position as she rocked back and forth whispering, "No, no, no, no. Why her? Why her?"

"Why who?" He asked gently. Amy just continued to rock. That was when he noticed the fallen phone. He picked it up and unlocked it, and immediately understood. He didn't say anything else as he set down the phone and just held his wife.

There were few moments in Rory's life where he had been the strong one, where Amy had broken. The first he could remember was Demon's Run. The second was the death of Therese at the hands of a drunk driver. This was the third, and honestly, Rory did not know which was the worst.

It was a few minutes before Amy allowed herself to be helped into the house and sat in her customary chair in the corner and given a cup of tea. Rory just sat beside her, the phone on the table in front of them, neither of them saying a word. It seemed like a lifetime of silence before Amy turned to Rory and asked,

"Do you think we'll ever see her again?"

Rory didn't know how to answer.

**I know that seems a bit melodramatic, but I swear I'll explain I promise! So... reviews? Thoughts are awesome!**


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